


The Guise of Candles

by Demi Wolfe (icarusfalls)



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco, The Heart Rate of a Mouse Series - Anna Green, brendon urie - Fandom
Genre: 1960s, 1970s, F/M, Gen, M/M, Other, Panic At The Disco (Band), Run Away, Runaway, Teenager, Young, anna green, baby brendon, based on a series, the heart rate of a mouse series, throam - Freeform, unofficial prologue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 12:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10899111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusfalls/pseuds/Demi%20Wolfe
Summary: Based on Anna Green's series "The Heart Rate of a Mouse", this unofficial prequel explores Brendon's life before Ryan Ross ever came into the picture.





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Volume 1: Over the Tracks - I](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10730553) by [Anna (arctic_grey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arctic_grey/pseuds/Anna). 



> The dialogue, incidents, and characters herein are not to be construed as real.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that this story, this completely fictional and wonderfully inspired story comes, first and foremost from the mind of Anna Green. She is the author of the series “ _The Heart Rate of a Mouse_ ” which, if you have not read I highly recommend. She is a talented author - more than that, but words have not yet been invented - and in reading her fic, I was consistently brought through every phase of every inch of my emotions. It uplifted me, and it wore me out. It was everything good reading should be.

The timeline of this story is largely Anna’s own. Many events of Brendon’s life are also her own ideas, only expanded upon by my own imagination. This is my interpretation, my chance to stretch my creative legs again and fill in the blanks we couldn’t see as we looked at the world through the promptly shattered, barely-rose-colored glasses of Ryan Ross. I do not claim that the way these events unfold are canonical to her story. I bow down to her, and I thank her a million times over for giving me enough inspiration to start writing again. It has been so long. I hope my tale does her vision justice.

Thank you, Anna, for getting me writing again at a time when I need an outlet the most.

This unofficial prequel comes at the request of a friend (and my adoptive mother) Deedee Lauren, without whom this would not be possible. She is the encouraging factor behind all of this, and I’m grateful to have met her. I hope I do her proud, too.

Please understand this will not be a comfortable story - there will be laughter and happiness, sure, but also love and loss. There will be turmoil as Brendon, our protagonist, ventures at fifteen through the journey of self discovery and survival. As he grows from a scared boy into a man hardened by his experience. This story isn’t meant to be comfortable, it’s meant to make you feel, and hopefully it finds itself in the same vein as _THROAM_ , making your heart ache and long for something to just go _right_ and for something to get better. I hope it is a reflection of life, and how life is random and raw and sometimes wrong. How life turns you upside down, but then can set you back on your feet again. I want to discover something with my readers.

You may recognize some names. I stayed true to Anna’s characterization as much as possible, but I retained the right to make tweaks to their younger selves. My writing does not, in any way, express my views of these real people who, if I did not love, I would not write about. I mean no ill will to anyone mentioned in this story. The names are borrowed, the stories are fictional.

In any case, I hope you enjoy this adventure. I hope, maybe, it fills in some blanks, however unofficially.

Many thanks,

Demi Wolfe


	2. Unhooking the Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Deedee, who beta'd this. You're the greatest.

I think I'll have to change my name.

I don't feel connected to my body, heart racing as my eyes dart around the house. It used to be warm here. I used to think I would stay forever. The pale yellow of the walls was like morning sun, I remember thinking that when I was younger. I remember telling my mother who had patted my head and smiled. “It's light.” She had said. “Heavenly father’s light. Touching you, washing over everyone in this house. Keeping us safe.”

He hadn't kept me safe when my father showed me just how much he loved me. In fact, at fifteen, I'm damn sure by now that he's forgotten me. If He even exists. I don't think He does. I don't believe them.

I stopped believing in Him when my dick stirred for the first time as a boy bent over at school. I stopped when I wrapped my hands around myself two days later and shuddered with pleasure as, for the first time, I felt release. No divine being would create something so intense and then condemn it.

God never existed. Or maybe he died. Maybe he choked on his own hypocrisy. Maybe he was shot by an angry mob like Joseph Smith.

Some prophet. Didn't even die right.

I am half expecting my father to come downstairs, screaming and swinging. My arm hurts, burns all the way down to the bone. My guts twist and I freeze with the thought, as if listening to the tiniest creak of a floorboard settling under the weight of his big feet, calloused and a little hairy on the big toe. The feet of a working man. The feet of someone who fears God, who trekked far and wide to tell the world about it. To convince them they should fear Him too.

My arm hurts. It's slow, and dull, and burns in the splinter of the bone. I flex my fingers as much as the cast will allow, and I breathe. He isn't coming down. No one is.

And I eye the piano against the family room wall, the sheet music opened to the second page of Matt’s favorite hymn.

And I leave. I leave and I know I'm never coming back. I wonder what they will think in the morning when they wake up and go down to breakfast and I don't join them. I wonder, for too long, so long that my throat burns with the threat of tears, which of my siblings will be the one to find the bed empty, made out of habit, no note, no apology, no explanation.

I wonder what was going through their minds when they watched what Father did. I wonder if, to all of them, it was justified. I wonder if they wanted to stop him.

I wonder if it was out of love.

I spit on the ground as I turn to face the house. Cross on the door. White wood. Vile.

The light on the porch flickers, once, twice, but I don't wait to see if it goes out. I just turn and leave.

It's all I can do. I make sure to lock the door behind me. A final piece of closure. The metaphorical note, the one that says I'm not coming back. The one I didn't leave on my bed. The one I never could bring myself to write.

The only one I sort of feel bad for is Mom. I could see in her face that Dad was hurting her too, just not physically. Fuck that, I think. Fuck that, and fuck her.

But deep down I'm scared. Scared as my feet hit pavement, hand me down pajama bottoms sliding down my hips.

Scared of the distance I carry myself before realizing I don't know where I am, but I know I can't see houses in the distance. Scared of the headlights whirring towards me, disorienting and yellowed as the engine of the vehicle argues with its driver. I can't make out the man behind the wheel, the lights are too bright and the car is too far.

My hair's a mess. My eyes are swollen, though I'm not sure if I cried. I don't remember. I'm running on autopilot. The thin white shit I'm wearing is probably see through under the direct exposure to the beams coming from his car.

I lift my arm, thumb up and out. I don't expect him to stop but I reach out anyway, my extended arm an open invitation. Kill me. Carry me away. I don't care, just get me out of here.

He stops. It's like, for one second I can believe in God. But then I remember. If God existed I wouldn't be running like this.

The machine grumbles its complaints as the vehicle slows to a crawl. The driver, who I can make out a silhouette of as I bring my spare hand to rest over my eyes, doesn't care. He rolls down his window with more speed than I expected.

It takes a second to register his features, or to even hear his voice over the sound of the car. I step forward, on instinct. He has to repeat himself, I can tell, because when I can finally hear him his tone is a little annoyed. A little forced. A little too loud to be the first time he's said whatever it is he's saying.

“You're just a kid,” he barks, “--Where are your folks?” The way he says it means he doesn't actually care. I just shrug, hands half in the pockets of the gray pants. I don't want to answer. He seems to know I won't.

“Can I have a ride or not?”

I can make out his head gesture, jerky, toward the passenger seat. I breathe a sigh of relief, I lick my lips, nervous and anticipating. I round the front of the truck, feel the heat of the radiator. I feel the heat of the lights. And then I feel the cool metal of the door handle and I pull. The metal is old and the hinges whine. I climb in. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what kind of car or how old it is. I don't have it in me to care. I just pull the door after me and let my eyes adjust to the darkness inside. I can see him now.

His jaw is big and broad, covered in stubble. I can't tell what color his eyes are, but I want to imagine it. I swallow. He's older, probably twice my age at least, some bits of his beard lighter. He doesn't look like the models in the magazine spreads I had shoved under my mattress - those, I had been sure to leave, scattered on the bed linen - but he’ll do. My savior. My ticket out of here.

He doesn't talk much, just focuses on the street, sometimes takes small sips out of a beer bottle he’s clearly had for some time. It sweats, but not really anymore. The watery droplets are smeared on the side of amber glass.

I've never had beer, but he feels me watching him, maybe catches me taking in the bob of his adam's apple as he sips. He doesn't say anything, but his arm extends. I flinch like he's going to hit me, but I just feel the bottle against my chest. A small thud. I fumble to take it, careful my fingers don't touch his. I don't want him to think… I don't know what I don't want him to think. I just don't.

I'm barely aware of the cast on my arm. I bring the bottle to my lips. I can taste his tongue on the lip of the bottle, and I shudder, swallow hard. The beer tastes terrible. Its warm. My tongue is coated with it, and the taste of him, and he tastes like cigarettes and burger grease. He lights one up as I sip absently on the abhorrent drink, like chugging it down will make any of this easier.

It does.

Another pleasure God condemns.

I watch him take both hands off the wheel to light a cigarette, and my heart jumps in my chest. I expect us to veer, to crash, but there is nothing to hit. I stare at the cigarette the same way I stared at the beer.

He hands me that, too.

I never catch his name. He doesn't ask mine. Its simple, like this is what people do. I know it's not.

I close my eyes.

 

*******

By the time I wake up, the landscape has changed. The air feels different coming through the windows, sneaking in in unsealed gaps. I don't know where we are but I'm alive, he's not crashed. The sun is coming up - it's mostly up, actually, and the world is coming to life. There is color.

I made it. I got out.

I could kiss this man, but i don't. Whatever was in the beer and the ashy-tasting cigarette have worn off. My arm hurts. Occasionally I see buildings, exit signs. I still have no idea where we are. None of the names are familiar. Out of Utah, then. Away from Mother, Dad, Matt. Away from 65 boys named Alma and one girl named the same.  

I'm definitely going to have to change my name.

Its 1965. It's probably trendy to change your name, right? That's probably what all the cool kids are doing. I don't know much about what goes on, what's on TV, but I know that some of the names I read just can't be real. The magazines are making it all up. Fake names. Fake people. Fake, fake, fake.

Just like home. Just like Dad’s love.

The car lurches over a bump as it turns, and my head hits the rest behind it. I realize my stomach is churning, thoughts flooding my mind and fear finally setting in in a way it hadn’t the night before.

It’s all a blur before the man tosses me out of his car, screaming about the vomit like most of it didn't go all over me. Me, in my cast and the last remnants of my old life, clinging fabric that sticks to my skin, coated in bile. I take off the shirt, toss it on the ground, but reckon there isn't much I can do about the pants. I brush them off. I scowl.

And I walk. I raise my arm, my thumb. I try again. Reinvent myself. I barely know who I am, changing a few key details shouldn’t be too hard, right? Christ… part of me wants to go back home. I stare into the sunny horizon, looking back in the direction we’d come from, wondering if they’d found it all yet.

The magazines. The neatly made bed. The heart ache. The sorrow. The loss.

What will they tell people?

I wander down the highway for a long while, no cars in sight. No clue where I am. I find a truck stop, a diner, and I step inside. Shirtless, shaking, covered in vomit. The waitress looks like she has half a mind to tell me to leave, but then she sees the ache in my eyes, the fear. She looks me up and down, analyzing me. Stripping me bare.

  
I’ve never felt so exposed. She sighs, dips into the back, and comes back with a shirt that might even be a woman’s. It’s black, with white lettering, and a little too big for me. The text is a logo maybe, but I thank her with my eyes and pull it over my head before I even consider looking down at it.

_Jack Daniels, Tennessee Whiskey._

I wonder if it tastes any better than beer.

“Where’m I?” I ask, voice hoarse and tired. I can taste the bile on my tongue still, and I’m hopeful she’ll be kind enough to give me some water or something to eat. Something to make my head stop spinning. There’s no one else in the diner except maybe one elderly man I see passing by the order window - just the top of his head, too shrunken for me to see any more.

There’s a flash of concern on the eyes of the woman’s face, and her eyes dart to the phone. Like she wants to call the police. Like she thinks I’m not here on my own volition or like she’s scared of me. I don’t know how to read it; I’ve never seen that look before. It’s startling to me - I wonder what I must look like.

“Not too far off from Bitter Springs, Arizona.” She finally answers me, and the name means nothing. I don’t know anything outside of Utah - my small, suffocating, condemned corner of Utah where everything is bad and nothing could’ve saved me.

I scratch my cast absent mindedly, licking my lips. “I”m hungry… been a long night.” I offer, my voice cracking but hopeful.

“Got any cash?”  
  
I haven’t, and the look at my feet tells her as much. She sighs and shakes her head.

“Alright, but you’re washing dishes to pay for it.” And she puts a firm hand - a calloused hand, not soft like my mother’s, but it reminds me of Dad, how he works, how his skin gets rough - on my shoulder and guides me to a booth in the corner. Like she’s ashamed of me, or like she doesn’t want anyone else to have to be.

The place is still empty.

*******

Washing dishes with a cast on proves difficult, and the splash back of the water is cold on my skin. The shirt she gave me is wet with suds and questionable foods, but I’m able to wipe that off. It’s clean enough, right? It’s the only shirt I have, so it’s gotta be. The waitress - her name is Lisa - slips into the back to check on me shortly after I hear the tinkle of the little bell over the front door and the heavy footfalls of boots, and trucker’s voices. I tense, and look over my shoulder. What I must look like to her - a puppy, lost and scared.

She doesn’t look like she’s happy as she surveys the small stack of dishes and the disproportionately large puddle of water on the floor. She sighs and shakes her head. “Haven’t you ever washed a plate before?”  
  
I bite my lip and glance at my cast.

“Here, mop this up. Surely you can do that with a broken arm. Then consider your debts paid.”

I do it. I thank her a half a dozen times, until she gets annoyed and waves me off, but not before I finally pull a smile from her. It’s a small one, and she tries to hide it, like it hurts to be amused. Like she’s too tired to smile.

It’s a feeling I understand.

Lisa is tall and blonde and a little bit old, but she’s still pretty. There are still teenage boys - and adult men, if the sound from the dining room is any indication - that would hoot and holler and collect images of her behind their eyes to jerk off to later. I’m not one of them, but I can see how pretty she is. She’s got lines by her eyes, like she used to actually smile, and little, shallow wrinkles leading down from her nose to her mouth. She’s world wearied, probably, truckers don’t have the best reputation, and working in a diner. It shows.

I wonder what she’d look like if she actually did something fun.

“The hell are you doing?” I hear the voice of an old man, and identify him as the man from the kitchens. We’ve shared the space for nearly an hour now, but he never noticed me. Better late than never. I guess it’s a good thing, going under the radar.

I open my mouth to answer, but Lisa’s doing it for me. “Oh, shove off it, Maurice. Leave him alone. He’s just helping out around here, just for the day. Doing a favor for me. Isn’t that right --”  
  
“Brendon.” I answer before I can stop myself. Then I hiss under my breath. So much for changing my name.

“Brendon. See. I know the kid. I vouch for him. And he’ll be gone soon enough, so why don’t you go make that burger and leave him alone?”  
  
I like Lisa. I like her more than the man who picked me up on the side of the road last night. She’s a good person, even if she’s cool and terse and a little weathered. I wonder if she believes in God. I wonder if she listens to the stories and the rules and if she goes home every night and prays on her knees to a man in the sky no one has ever seen.

With every mile between me and home, I believe less and less that God exists. Life is random, not divinely planned, and my worldview is skewed. I don’t know what to think. I haven’t been… _exposed_  to anything. But I have a will to survive. A need to. I have instinct, and I’m going to have to hope that it’s good enough to get me through. I don’t have any other choices.

I lean the mop against the wall as Lisa leaves me with a grumbling and obviously distracted Maurice. I wonder how they’re related, if they’re related. Is he her father? Her uncle? An older brother or cousin? Probably not brother, he’s too old for that. But then, who knows. I don’t ask.

I round the doorway and the talk in the dining room stops as one of the truckers catches sight of me, and the other two he’s with turn their gazes on me. My cheeks flush, I can feel them devouring me too. It’s like everyone in this world just wants to chew you up and spit you out. I don’t move, I can’t, but they’re still staring. Fifteen, lanky, tall but not too tall, standing in a woman’s shirt and stained sleeping pants. And they’re just taking me in, like I’m not supposed to be there, like there’s something they want from me that I don’t know how to give.

I don’t know why I do it, what possesses me, but my feet move forward and suddenly I’m next to their table and my body feels hot, my face feels hot, my arm screams, and they’re there. I can feel the burn of their eyes, and I’m sure for a moment I’ll burst into flames. I think I can feel tears prick the corners of my eyes, but I can feel the sting in my nose for sure, the one where you know you have only a second to catch yourself. I swallow hard.

“Can one of you give me a ride?”

Two of the men don’t let their faces change, they barely acknowledge that they’ve heard me. The third, though, is letting my voice go through his head - I can practically see it behind his eyes - and his lips turn up in a small, crooked smile that makes my stomach do somersaults. This is how I die, how I -- “Sure. If you don’t care where you’re goin’”

“Anywhere that’s not here.” I answer, though wouldn’t it be ironic if he was on the way back? If he dragged me home and left me stranded there. Surely that’d be worse than any death I could possibly be put to. But I don’t think he is. I have to hope he’s not, at least.

His big hand engulfs my shoulder - I should be broader by now, should’ve filled out, but I haven’t. I’m lanky and lean, but I’m tougher than I look… and I don’t look tough at all right now, gray pants, borrowed shirt, tired eyes, pouting lips, messy hair, broken arm. I’m the picture of weakness, of exploitability, and this man looks like he knows it. He looks like he can smell the impressionable-ness of me, something I’ll need to change. Change it right after I change my name. Change it right after I change everything.

His smile grows, and I recede into myself even more.

Don’t smile at me like that, don’t do this to me. I need you.

I know he doesn’t need me. It’s a realization that this is one sided, that I haven’t got anything to offer except company. Inexperienced company from a kid who doesn’t even have a hint of a clue where he is. It isn’t like a meal in a diner than I can just work off with a mop or a sponge. I don’t know what to give him in return for his generosity, if he asks. If he’s even being generous. Who knows what he has in store. It’s a risk I have to take because I haven’t got any other options.

 

 *******

Route 89 is nothing to write home about. It’s a winding path at times, but the truck - and the man behind the wheel - seem to know what they’re doing. The cabin is set up alright, a small ladder up to a tiny bed just behind the seats, empty cartons of cigarettes strewn about. The whole place smells like sweat and man and ruggedness I’ve never been exposed to. My hormones don’t know what to make it of it, but I like it. It smells like someone has been here, working here, living here, and it’s musky and dark and deep. I want to put my nose to the upholstery of the seat and breathe it in, but I don’t.

The man who picked me up isn’t attractive. He’s every bit of forty five, and he doesn’t talk much, but he occasionally lets his eyes drag over my body. He gave me a pair of pants - too big, but I was in no position to deny clean clothes - and a belt that I had to poke a new hole in to make it stay. I feel ridiculous in denim and this Jack Daniel’s shirt, but beggars can’t be choosers. Every time he looks at me my stomach lurches. I have to remind myself that vomiting in someone else’s car is a one way ticket to the side of the road, so I swallow it down. Besides, who knows when I’ll eat again… I’m not giving up the pancakes Lisa served up that easily.

We drive for a little more than an hour before we stop again, pulling off the interstate at an exit that reads _‘Flagstaff_ ’. He parks the truck at a gas station and I get out, wandering around, looking at the sights. It’s not a big town by any means, but there are shops so I assume there must be houses. I can see a church down the street and I groan, but it’s not _my_ church, so it’s not too bad. There’s a cafe, where a young girl with a short haircut wanders out, humming a tune to herself. A boy followers her, lean and tall, a cigarette between his lips and my gut wrenches. I carry my feet forward and then stop, because what the hell am I doing?

I look back at the truck, then to the cafe, then down the street again.

I don’t have anything to offer this man, but maybe this town has something to offer me.

He steps inside the gas station to go and pay, and I’m off as fast as my legs will carry me. I don’t run, don’t try to attract attention, but I speed through a small group of people, nearly trip over the borrowed-now-stolen-pants I’m wearing, weave around a corner, away. I lean against the brick wall of a pharmacy, and I breathe slowly. I bend to roll the Levi’s, struggling to make the fingers of my broken arm accommodate the movement. I breathe. I stand up. I breathe.

 _Flagstaff Drugs,_ the sign above me reads. And okay. Okay, I’ve made it somewhere. Somewhere not Utah. And I’ll make it. I’ll clean dishes, I’ll sweep floors. I’ll make it.

Someone will pity me. Not that I need it. But they will, they’ll take one look at me the same way Lisa did and they’ll recoil and then they’ll relent. I’m banking on it, at least for now. I’m shaking, I realize, as I catch my breath. Every inch of me is trembling from the floor up and I sink down to the ground and pull my knees to my chest. I fold my arms, I bury my face there.

And for the first time I let myself cry.


End file.
